Topic: Recommendations for multi-server management

[jasonv]

Hi.. I'm interested in using SME as a PDC replacement, but my dilemma is I'd like to have certain "functions" distributed across multiple servers. My quick look at SME didn't indicate and easy way to do this. For instance, I'd really like to manage FTP and user home directories on separate servers... is that possible? Also, I'd like to not use the mail functions but pass mail through to scalix instead.

It seemed like manual editing of config files would get overwritten the next time a web interface edit was made.

Thanks.

[silasp]

Hi there.
From memory, there's a setting in the SME 7 server-manager panel that allows you to delegate the mail serving to another box on your local network, you'd just point that at the IP of your mail-server box. I think it's "edit email settings", but I'm not 100% sure.

URL is
http://yourservername/server-manager
It will only work on your local network; UN = admin, PW = whatever you set the root password to.

As for FTP (and presumably you want to use that box as a web-server as well),  I'm pretty sure SME 7 has port forwarding built in to the server-manager - you'd just use that to forward ports 80, 443 and 21 to the web-server box IP.

Another thought, if you wanted to host the home directories on another server, I'd:
[1] Rsync the /home directory to the new server
[2] Delete the old server home directories, then mount new server /home directory on the old (SME) server at the same place (/home)
[3] Alter startup files to make the change permanant.

Server-manager would automatically take care of the template files - you wouldn't need to worry about things being overwritten on updates. If you want to make a more specific change to a config file, you just need to create a custom template:
eg if you wanted to edit /etc/dir/something.config
you usually just do something like this:

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/dir/something.config
pico /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/dir/something.config/line001
(insert your configuration lines)

expand-template /etc/dir/something.config

Then:
less /etc/dir/something.config
(to check that it actually worked)


Only problem with the setup you described is that you would need to set up 3 sets of user accounts - one for mail, one for domain logons and one for web/ftp access.  There might be some way to copy them across with an LDAP tool.

Hope that helps.
Silas.